US President Donald Trump will this week sign a deal that enables the US version of TikTok to be owned by American investors, the White House has said.
The agreement would satisfy bipartisan legislation approved last year requiring TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, to divest its popular video-sharing app in the US or face a ban over concerns of how Beijing handles user data.
“The President will be signing the deal, the official deal, later this week,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday.
“Under the terms of this deal, TikTok will be owned by a majority of American investors and controlled by a board of directors with extensive national security and cybersecurity credentials.”
Mr Trump, who has praised TikTok for helping him to reach younger voters, has kept the app active in the US by ordering its ban to be deferred while a deal was worked out.
About 170 million people in the US use TikTok. Ms Leavitt said Oracle will serve as TikTok's “trusted security provider” in partnership with the US government.
She said businesses that rely on TikTok will generate $178 billion in economic activity in the US over the next four years.
“This is great news, not just for the millions of American youth who use TikTok – their data will be safe and secure with this new deal,” Ms Leavitt said.
Earlier on Monday, White House officials said tech giant Oracle would receive a copy of the app's algorithm and begin to manage it. Private equity firm Silver Lake will be one of the investors.
ByteDance will own less than 20 per cent under the deal. It would see TikTok's algorithm moved into the US and then run on US data, a senior White House official told journalists.
“We feel that that is the appropriate way, in co-operation and consultation with Oracle, to make sure that the algorithm is behaving appropriately.”
The announcement comes after Mr Trump last week said that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit each other's country and will meet at an Asian summit next month.
